Another Silent Spring?

Neonicotinoids appear to have devastating effects across the natural world: we need a global moratorium…

Here’s our choice. We wait and see whether a class of powerful pesticides, made by Bayer and Syngenta, is indeed pushing entire ecosystems to oblivion, or we suspend their use while proper trials are conducted. The natural world versus two chemical companies: how hard can this be?

Papers published over the past few weeks suggest that neonicotinoids, pesticides implicated in killing or disabling bees, have similar effects on much of life on earth. On land and in water, these neurotoxins appear to be degrading entire foodchains. Licensed before sufficient tests were conducted, they are now the world’s most widely used pesticides. We are just beginning to understand what we’ve walked into.

A paper in Nature last week showed a strong correlation between neonicotinoid concentrations and the decline of birds such as swallows, skylarks, yellowhammers, wagtails, starlings and whitethroats(1). It couldn’t demonstrate causation, but it was elegantly designed to exclude competing factors. The precipitous loss of insects caused by this pesticide is the simplest and most obvious explanation, as all these birds depend on insects to feed their young. Where the chemical was heavily used, bird populations fell by 3.5% a year; where it was not, they held up. At this rate, it doesn’t take long to engineer a world without song.

Another paper reports that residues of neonicotinoids were found in all the soil samples the researchers took(2): these chemicals are highly persistant. Sold to farmers as precise and targeted, they are some of the least discriminate pesticides ever produced. When they are used to treat seeds, just 5% is absorbed by the plant: the rest soaks into the soil, with potentially lethal impacts on the animals that maintain its structure and fertility(3).

They are also water-soluble. Recent papers suggest a collapse in the diversity and abundance of invertebrates in water running off farms where neonicotinoids are used(4,5.6). Mayflies and caddisflies, essential to the survival of many aquatic ecosystems, are especially vulnerable(7).

Another new paper provides compelling evidence linking these chemicals to colony collapse disorder: the sudden disappearance of honeybees that’s now trashing the livelihoods of beekeepers in the US(8). Half the colonies exposed to neonicotinoids disappeared in the course of one winter; none of the untreated swarms vanished.

Worldwide contamination, indiscriminately wiping out wild animals, including those on which farming depends: these are the findings of an analysis of 800 scientific papers, also just published(9). How much more obvious does the case for action need to be?

Sure, there is plenty that we don’t yet know. We know almost nothing about the long-term, cumulative effects of these chemicals, or about what neonicotinoids do to birds that eat contaminated seeds, to mammal and amphibian populations, to coral reefs or marine life of any kind(10). Governments went into it blind, approving neonicotinoids before they had even a fraction of the necessary knowledge.

Far from being essential to food production, these pesticides are a serious threat to food supplies, through their likely impacts on bees and soil animals. They are well-designed for lazy farming, but their advantages vanish in the face of more sophisticated methods such as integrated pest management(11). The only sensible response to the little we know so far is a global moratorium, pending further research, for all purposes except the control of human diseases.

In August 1962, after extracts from Rachel Carson’s forthcoming book Silent Spring were published, President Kennedy launched a commission to investigate the impacts of the pesticide DDT. Within 10 years it was banned from use in the United States, except for public health emergencies(12).

This was despite lawsuits and a massive lobbying and disinformation campaign by the chemicals industry. Alongside the usual accusations of hysteria and other alleged female pathologies, it suggested that Carson was seeking to destroy American farming on behalf of the Soviet Union(13). The smears continue to this day. Corporate front groups concocted a myth that DDT was banned worldwide as a result Carson’s book, causing the deaths of millions through malaria(14,15). In fact the ban (through the Stockholm Convention) is for agricultural purposes but not disease control(16). DDT would soon have become useless against malaria had it continued to be used by farmers: the wider their exposure, the more quickly mosquitoes become resistant. Kennedy and his successors held firm.

Compare this with the British government’s response to attempts to control neonicotinoids. It threw everything it had against an EU proposal to suspend their use on flowering crops. Owen Paterson, the worst environment secretary this country has ever suffered, who was struck down by the Curse of Monbiot on Monday night(17), wrote privately to Syngenta to reassure it that “our efforts [to stop the suspension] will continue and intensify in the coming days”(18). His department commissioned a study claiming to show that bees were not being harmed(19). It was so flawed that no journal would take it. The lead author soon left to work for Syngenta(20).

The government’s chief scientist, Sir Mark Walport, made wildly misleading statements about the science and used scare tactics and emotional blackmail to try to keep the pesticides in circulation(21). Fortunately the government’s campaign failed, and a two-year moratorium, though limited only to certain flowering crops, came into force across the EU in December 2013(22).

The case for a global moratorium is just as strong, so once more the government weighs in on the wrong side. Ian Boyd, chief scientist at the environment department, sought last week to dismiss the new Nature paper(23). His article was so slapdash that he couldn’t even get the lead author’s name right(24). He insisted that there was insufficient evidence to draw conclusions. So did he announce a massive research programme to resolve the uncertainties? Did he hell. Uncertainty suits these people, and they will exploit it as ruthlessly as they can.

Will the new secretary of state, Liz Truss, champion science, not chemical companies? I would love to believe that there might be a remaining glimmer of recognition that governments exist to protect us from exploitation and destruction. Kennedy knew it, for all his faults. Like him, our politicians have a clear choice: surrender to corporate bullies or defend the living world. What will they do?

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by Lylla Younes Data from a civil rights group shows that reports of hate incidents involving American mosques jumped sharply in 2015 and has remained at the same rate since — about once every three days.

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This marketing tactic is hugely dishonest, yes, but it's also very effective against the unwary. No wonder so many Christians use it so often in their evangelism efforts: we carry around in our heads a raft of cognitive biases that ensure that even the most skeptical of us can fall for bait-and-switch evangelism. Today I'll show you what this type […]

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By Jeanna Bryner and Denise Chow On Monday, Aug. 21, the Great American Eclipse will give those in the United States a rare sight — the moon will slip in front of the sun, blocking the rays from hitting Earth and resulting in a gorgeous solar eclipse for those in the path of totality, from Oregon to South Carolina, and a partial one for those outside that pa […]

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There is NO EVIDENCE that the Bible is from or inspired by a God, or that either of these two man-made biblical scriptures -- foundational to Christianism -- is true: Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave is only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." NONE.

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. ~Robert Ingersoll

If prayer actually worked, everyone would be a millionaire, nobody would ever get sick and die, and both football teams would always win. ~Ethan Winer

Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world. ~Voltaire

The strongly religious fear our capacity for moral reasoning that does not require a magical, invisible deity. They fear our ability to be ethical without the threat of hell or the reward of heaven. They fear that our allegiance is not to this or that country, or this or that prophet, or this or that guru, but to humanity as a whole. ~Phil Zuckerman

The idea that God could only forgive our sins by having his son tortured to death as a scapegoat is surely, from an objective point of view, a deeply unpleasant idea. If God wanted to forgive us our sins, why didn’t he just forgive them? Why did he have to have his son tortured? ~Richard Dawkins

Small is beautiful, when small is skilled and dedicated. ~Gene Logsdon

It is the right of every rational adult to choose their time of death and that has NOTHING to do with how sick you are.~Exit International

All religions are lies and scams, and all believers are victims. ~David Silverman

We [atheists] have no martyrs, we have no saints. ~Christopher Hitchens

Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right. ~H L Mencken

I've observed that people tend to live at one of two extremes in the spectrum of life: those who live on the edge, and those who avoid the edge. Those who live on the edge are hanging out in the most dangerous and unstable places — yet they're also often the most powerful agents of change, because the edge is where change is happening; away from the edge, things are naturally unchanging. ~Thom Hartmann

Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion. ~Jon Stewart

My 12th year was my most Christian and most boring year in my life. ~Chuck Berry

Come on. You just can’t come up with anything more ridiculous than someone who honestly thinks that all human woes stem from an incident in which a talking snake accosted a naked woman in a primeval garden and talked her into eating a piece of fruit. ~Keith Parsons

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

Christians don’t need to be born again, they need to grow up. ~John Shelby Spong

Life is not a problem to be solved, nor a question to be answered. Life is a mystery to be experienced. ~Alan Watts

Society is like a stew: If you don't stir it up every now and then, the scum rises to the top.~Edward Abbey

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~Buckminster Fuller

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one. ~ Richard Dawkins

I’m not saying there isn’t a god, but there isn’t a god who cares about people. And who wants a god who doesn’t give a shit? ~Robert Munsch

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. ~Arthur C. Clarke

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death
while praying for a fish. ~ Anon

When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ~ Stephen Roberts

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. ~ Joseph Campbell

The only true definition of an atheist: a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in God or gods. ~Oxford English Dictionary

You have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Faith is just another word for gullibility.

I sang as one / Who on a tilting deck sings / To keep men's courage up, though the wave hangs / That shall cut off their sun. ~C. Day Lewis

Resilience Tools (Basic)

Freethought/Stoics

The Wikipedia of Christian Terrorism (Link)

Books in the Freethinkers Library

What is a fact beyond all doubt is that we share an ancestor with every other species of animal and plant on the planet. We know this because some genes are recognizably the same genes in all living creatures, including animals, plants and bacteria. And, above all, the genetic code itself — the dictionary by which all genes are translated — is the same across all living creatures that have ever been looked at. We are all cousins. Your family tree includes not just obvious cousins like chimpanzees and monkeys but also mice, buffaloes, iguanas, wallabies, snails, dandelions, golden eagles, mushrooms, whales, wombats and bacteria. All are our cousins. Every last one of them. Isn't that a far more wonderful thought than any myth? And the most wonderful thing of all is that we know for certain it is literally true...

The whole world is made of incredibly tiny things, much too small to be visible to the naked eye — and yet none of the myths or so-called holy books that some people, even now, think were given to us by an all-knowing god, mentions them at all! In fact, when you look at those myths and stories, you can see that they don't contain any of the knowledge that science has patiently worked out. They don't tell us how big or how old the universe is; they don't tell us how to treat cancer; they don't explain gravity or the internal combustion engine; they don't tell us about germs, or anesthetics. In fact, unsurprisingly, the stories in holy books don't contain any more information about the world than was known to the primitive peoples who first started telling them! If these 'holy books' really were written, or dictated, or inspired, by all-knowing gods, don't you think it's odd that those gods said nothing about any of these important and useful things? -Richard Dawkins

Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws… It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such.

I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? -Zora Neale Hurston

An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated. ~Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Founder

In the history of the world, the number of times a supernatural anything has been proven true is zero. Every god, ghost, spirit, devil, possession, and miracle ever claimed true is a lie. No exceptions. The number of times an atheistic (godless) argument has been proven wrong by a theistic argument is zero... In contrast, every time a theist-versus-atheist argument has been settled, an atheistic argument has won. This does not mean science is antireligion; it just means (or rather, strongly implies) religion is wrong... I challenge anyone to find any scientifically valid testable proof of anything supernatural, ever. If you can prove it, even once, I'll quit my job. I'm not nervous, as it has never been done in history, because it's ALL a lie. ~David Silverman, President

Local Organic Family Farms

THE SMALL ORGANIC FARM greatly discomforts the corporate/ industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.

Thomas Jefferson said he didn’t think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.

It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can’t be bullied because they can feed their own faces. ~Eliot Coleman